What really strikes me though is that Dodge 5 vs Attack 5-5.5 has only 42% to successfully avoid damage.
What is worse, getting an attack score of 5 is much cheaper than Dodge 5 (4 dex and 2 weapon skill is 9 SP, 5 dodge is 11 SP).

Which brings me to 2 questions (serious, genuine ones, born out of curiosity that there is something I surely missed):

- is there a particular reason attack takes 2 skills in account, but dodging only 1? It creates a situation where avoiding attack has an artificial ceiling of 5, while attack can get 50% higher - leading to pretty deadly combat.

- Is any investment in dodge that is less than 5 even worth it?
Even basic combat NPC has starting dex 2 projectile 3 (3.5) , which pretty quickly can be changed into 4.5 (only LVL 3 required, some NPCs are even born this way). It is enough to make dodge 2-3 underperforming, making those points better spent in combat skills and relying on alpha strike from outside the range..

I had same discussion with my friends recently. As someone who used to be more invested into Dodge before, I think it is a secondary skill at the moment. Usually in games with skill levels, focusing on dodge (and supporting skills) can make you almost un-hittable but you are sacrificing attack skills. The "problem" in SWC right now is that Attack skills can go higher than Dodge skill, which makes it less useful on higher levels against other higher levels.

But I wouldn't discard it entirely. It will always depend on who you fighting, at what range, at what level and so on, but it will always help your chances to get less dmg. Especially if you are in a squad as there will be less attacks against you.

Many PCs you might end up fighting, and their few elite squads will be on high levels but it is unlikely to be the norm. Creatures and Bandits have lower skills and nobody has time to lvlup hundreds upon hundreds of NPCs.

I still believe that high dodge+high armour will likely result in taking minimal damage each round, but yeah it is better to invest into Dexterity first.

I would recommend looking up how effective HP works and constructing a table of the eHP modifiers for various dodge vs. dex+pw combinations to see how it works and then decide if it is worth it. Simply going on 5 vs. 7.5 as the max value doesn't mean anything because we have a hit chance table that is based on both, and that table has a big impact.

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"On two occasions I have been asked,—"Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
- Charles Babbage

@Sel - yeah, considered that too as an alternate investment (through STR and HP imporvement), especially as I'm of a race that is already pretty HP bloated from the start and so are my NPCs.

With properly heavy armor (and a shield, once they get implemented - as of now they don't add to armor) I'm inclined to go even further in the direction of shooting skill > dodge. Also known as Face Tanking.

Though Lilith raises a good point - having a 1-2 dodge will never hurt and is relatively cheap. And saves the shame of being actually hit by battle droids.